While I’m still chipping away at my AmigaOS 4.1/sam440ep review (try writing a thesis and a large review at the same time), Cloanto released AmigaForever 2009. AmigaForever is a very full-featured AmigaOS emulation tool, packed with various different ROMs and AmigaOS versions (1.3-3.x), as well as tons and tons of included games, software, and demos. This new version comes with even more stuff.
AmigaForever bundles various Amiga emulators with various ROMs and pieces of Amiga software, all tied together by a straightforward interface. The emulators are powerful, allowing for emulation of all the specific chips in the Amiga, making sure all the software you could possibly want runs. The new features of the 2009 version:
- All included games and demoscene productions are now in RP2 format (uses less disk space and makes it very easy to add or remove files)
- RP2 Manager to scan for and import/export content
- Built-in RetroPlatform Library (to recognize and configure games, etc.) with live updates
- Seamless, one-click integration of AmiKit and AmigaSYS add-ons lets you experience a broader variety of Amiga perspectives
- New system ROMs (e.g. the 0.7 Kickstart required to run the software used by Andy Warhol in the 1985 Launch of Amiga demo)
- Improved documentation and help (new Tip of The Day balloon, new documentation in Windows Help format)
- Emphasis on usability: interface and settings are improved, but remain consistent with the previous 2008 version and with C64 Forever
- Tested to comply with “Compatible with Windows 7” requirements, with full support for Windows Vista and Windows 7, both x86 and x64 (possibly still the first and only Windows software with custom-shaped glass-enabled skin)
This new version also comes in two editions: Value and Plus, where Value has less games and ROMs. There’s also a Premium edition which has some extra collectibles and a nice packaging (the other two are downloads). AmigaForever is technically platform neutral (as long as your platform has an Amiga emulator) but is still clearly geared towards Windows.
As a long time fan of Commodore and especially Amigas (owned Amiga 500, 2000 & 3000) I’m happy to see these great computers living on in some form!
Edited 2009-07-03 23:06 UTC
Does it install as an application within Windows or as a dual-boot, or how?
It is available for many platforms, can run as a livecd depending on what version but you can run it from within windows by default (emulation) http://www.amigaforever.com/features/. You can set it up to double-click disk images to play them. Does the plus version have Another World or Lemmings games?
Anyone know if it runs on wine?
I know they include binaries of UAE for linux, but I don’t think it’s the same experience as what you get on windows.
Not sure that Wine is an issue since it includes a Linux version of UAE on the DVD.
Great, running an emulator in an emulator…uh wait, Wine Is Not an Emulator! Just a dumb joke there. I amused myself at least.
According to the article below it does:
http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/wine-1-1-24-lastest-build…
Edited 2009-07-06 14:23 UTC
Running WinUAE on WINE is probably a good idea. EUAE hasn’t been as well maintained and is mostly only a backport of concepts from WinUAE to an OpenGL-based system.
Very good that Amiga has so many supporters even today. Although I was (and I’m somehow) a big fan of 16/32-bit Atari (ST/Mega/STE/TT030/Falcon) 😉 These were not so popular like Amiga at the end of the day (back in time :-), but these computers have found their own niches here and there. If you’ll check the web, you’ll see that Atari has also quite strong fan base today – not so wide like Amiga, but as for less popular platform, quite impressive.
Don’t you think it would be great to have Amiga and Atari back again? 😉 Now we have x86 variants everywhere, people used to program using Java, C#, sophisticated frameworks, etc. Who cares about good C and assembler libraries written by yourself? 🙂
Times have changed, but I’m still excited the same way about IT technologies like when I was a kid, when Amiga was the top multimedia computer and even Atari ST was giving me and my friends a lot of shivers (especially when we were trying to copy Amiga results as much as possible).
Greetings to all Motorola-based-machines fellows!
Edited 2009-07-04 07:46 UTC
I think this TI99 emu is legit
http://www.harmlesslion.com/cgi-bin/showprog.cgi?search=classic99
I’ve used Classic99 before, and it works. I’ve also used the V9T9 emulator for the Ti99/4a computer. Worked OK too.
There are Atari emulators, at least for the 2600 game systems. I’ve had a lot of luck with those – actually played the games better than the commercial retro game packs.
A quick search shows that there are quite a few emulators for the Atari ST and their other computer systems. I’ve no experience with them…
My recommendations on Atari ST emulation:
– Steem – on MS Windows. It even emulates much more than real hardware was able to do 😉 Really great!
– Hatari – on *nix and especially GNU/Linux. The best emulator ever for me. I have this one installed on my PS3 running YDL 6.1 and on my main workstation (it’s notebook of course, today) which is running Slackware 12.2. I can highly recommend this emulator for all GNU/Linux users.
And there is a piece of art. It’s not an emulator in fact. It’s a JIT compiler which allows us to run 16/32-bit Atari software on our PC’s. It’s called Aranym (Atari Running on Any Machine). This project really impressed me. It’s just great, especially if you’ll try bootable version based on GNU/Linux distribution, called AFROS (it’s Live CD). But be aware, Aranym is not developed with running games in mind. It’s rather for power users and developers – for example, you can install/use MiNT operating system on it.
Check it out:
Steem: http://aros.sourceforge.net/
Hatari: http://hatari.berlios.de/
Aranym: http://www.aranym.org/
I was talking about Ataris, but I’m inspired by the news presented here and if I could recommend something interesting from Amiga world, it would be:
http://aros.sourceforge.net/
Remember! Both 16/32-bit Amigas and 16/32-bit Ataris were great machines. Thanks to them many of us are now professional IT workers and even more (graphic artists, musicians etc.)… Comparing them to decide which one was better is stupid and good for kids. Both platforms were great in their own way, and in fact both had their own niches. It’s not fair to compare such a great machines, it’s like comparing beauty of a woman – gentlemen shouldn’t do that. All women are beautiful, the rest is a question of our own tastes. I hope you got my idea – we shouldn’t make any flame wars here, the better idea is to celebrate the starts from the past, all our Ataris and Amigas (and others, which are important to others 😉
Greetings to all the guys having sentiment to the old computing platforms!
Maybe I did not do my homework right, but I wish someone could come up with a complete package like that for ATARI 520/1040/TT emulator. With ROMS and games/demos.
That would be cool. Complete Amiga and Atari on your Window PC.
This looks like basically the same thing.
http://www.gamebasest.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/